Two Children, No “Cults”: Chinese Family Advertising

The scene above is from Walmart in eastern Beijing. As longtime Letter readerswill notice, it fits into a perplexing phenomenon, in which the nation that gave us the one-child policy now advertises a growing share of its goods and services with two-child families. I encountered this happy clan presiding over the escalator, when I sought refuge from the heat last weekend. In other cases that I’ve mentioned, one noticeable pattern is that the girls have been older than the boys, a nod, perhaps—and this is a guess—to the fact that families in some rural areas are allowed to have two kids if the first is a girl. But, in the micro-details of this evolution, it’s worth noting that the Walmart family features an older boy and a younger girl.

The pressure for change of China’s one-child policy seems to be mounting. In the weeks since China recoiled at the story of Feng Jianmei, the twenty-three-year-old expectant mother who was forced to have an abortion at seven months, the issue has lingered in the national conversation, and scientists have begun to lend their authority. This week, a group of Chinese government researchers called, in the name of economic sense, to ease the one-child policy as soon as possible in order to mitigate the impact of a rapidly aging population and a decline in the nation’s number of working-age citizens. “The longer time we take to adjust the policy, the more vulnerable we become,” three researchers from a state-backed think tank wrote on Tuesday in the China Economic Times. (h/t Bloomberg.) The economic effects are no mystery: China is facing a wave of retirements and does not have enough people to replace them. The workforce is on pace to decline by 17.3 per cent. Boosting the fertility rate to 2.3 children per woman, from the current level of roughly 1.6, would cut that dropoff in half by 2050.

But will it relax the policy? Not overnight. The forces arrayed against that change are considerable. The sociologist Li Jianxin, of Peking University, has warned of the coming demographic danger to the economy, but has concluded: “Our top decision makers haven’t realized the seriousness of the problem,” Li told the Global Times this week. There is another reason to expect change to be slow: it’s a money-maker: “To some extent, the expensive fines for extra babies have become a convenient means for local authorities to reap huge profits,” Li said.

I was reminded of the gap between Walmart China and what we might call Official China, barely an hour after seeing the two-child ad, when I came upon a line of new posters (one of which is pictured below) that the local Party committee had tacked to the wall outside our front door. No two children there. It shows a one-child family—with a girl, not incidentally—against a pleasant background of pink and white daisies and a twinkly stars. The message: “Practice a Life of Science: Families Reject Cults.” Beneath the parents and child, it explains: “The Beijing Anti-Cult Association reminds citizen-friends to actively participate in ‘Families Reject Cults” activities, to take the initiative to boycott cults and collectively build a harmonious society.’”

“Cults” have been a recurring presence in local Party-speak ever since the crackdown on Falun Gong more than a decade ago, and it seems there is a new wave of reminders these days. When the anti-cult association starts advertising with two kids, you can expect the end of the one-child policy any day.

Evan Osnos joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 2008, and covers politics and foreign affairs.